newsletter4-2001

25 April 2001
Notes from the April 2001 Meeting
Remarks by Jack Latona at the first �on-going discussion about the future�

I want to thank the James Randi Educational Foundation for providing the space and refreshments here tonight. About half of us are part of the regular end-of-month meeting of skeptics and the other half of the group are people I�ve invited here tonight to describe the work of the Center for Creating the Future.

Let�s begin with some introductions�

(Click here to see Jack Latona�s bio).

The Beginning of the Center
I had an opportunity to teach a course at FAU on the Millennium. The focus was on where we were, where we are and where we�re going. Since that point I�ve been thinking a lot about the third element.

I was at one of those charitable dinner parties and someone said, �Oh, the future! That�s so interesting. You know, we�re going to be able to predict the future. We�ll be able to identify the people with psychic ability and their children will be so much more psychic. We�ll be able to make better psychics.�

I was at a dinner party so I wasn�t able to jump on that but I did come up with this line: �I don�t think we�ll be able to predict the future, but we are going to be able to create the future.�

The fact of the matter is that it led me to think more about the future. Thanks to the wisdom of the voters of District 4, I�ve been able to take a lot more time to think about the future.

1. the future

2. we know that we will be able to influence it today.

Take a few minutes to start making decisions now that will make us more comfortable with the future.

There are countless examples.

The center is has the �here and now�. At the suggestion of Molly Hughes and Mike Sherman, I�ve been thinking about actual projects, in addition to just spraying ideas into the Internet. We now have two proposals out, one about the future of parking in Broward County.

At this time there turns out to be two major issues facing local government, education and transportation. We are addressing these immediate issues.

Then we will be talking about more global issues.

What do we know about the future?

One of the books that helped to form my ideas is Alvin Toffler�s book, the third Wave.    Why do you want students to read a book that is 20 years old when you are talking about the future? Because it�s very instructive. If you go back and read what he wrote in 1979, you will see that he got almost all of it right.

He has no mystic powers. Compare his predictions based on his knowledge of technological trends and the psychics at the time, and Alvin Toffler has a much better track record than psychics.

We know that communications will become more electronic and cheaper, we know that technology is getting faster. So what will that mean?   It�s getting to the point where it costs so much to keep track of telephone calls and eventually they�ll make the phone calls will be free. You�ll pay a flat rate. That has implications for the state of Florida.

Utility fees are imposed on the cellular phone bills of all users in the State. When I mentioned this to certain people in Tallahassee, they said, �Oh, yeah, I guess you�re right.�     I don�t hear anybody is actually planning. This lack of preparation is what I�m worried about. We know that this technological revolution is going to happen.   This is not a supernormal perception or prediction

We know that this technology is getting refined and cheaper and cheaper.

Genetic engineering is in the news.
It�s going to happen.
It�s going to range from �Of course, why not tweak an embryo�s DNA so they won�t have a disease or crippling condition.� Most people say, �Great idea.� But then on the other end of the range of possibilities is �are we going to clone human beings?�
Many people�s reaction is �Oh, we can�t do that.�

Somewhere in between is probably where it will be. We know it�s going to happen and we need to begin to prepare ourselves.

People will be living longer. Who is going to pay for social security? In 2000, there were 4.2 workers per one retiree, and we�re looking now at projections of 2 workers per retiree in

When people are living comfortably to 120 and 140, who will pay for that?

By the way, I have a tough time coming up with the questions. Please don�t expect answers!

DIVERSITY
We know that our population will be more mixed. We�re not talking just racial diversity.

We will have an extraordinary great variety in the diversity, greater than our country has ever had before.

The reaction by many people is � What about the great influx of immigration around the turn of the century?� That flood of people came largely from a narrower range of the world�s population, primarily Western Europe, first north, then south.

They were sharing much more of the same culture than the people coming into this country today.

Diversity in Languages
So we are going to be confronting (this is very positive and liberating with the number of choices that we will have)

Think of all the choices.

My wife and I have traveled enough to recognize many languages and we were in Toronto. The radio in the taxicab had some language that we just couldn�t place. It turned out to be Hindi, a language you can be sure most people 100 years or even 50 years ago had never heard.

Soon we will have satellite radio

When I was younger, there were three kinds of Judaism, one kind of Catholicism, maybe 10 types of Protestantism. The Mormons were there, small Jehovah�s witnesses and 7th day Adventists. If you switched from any one of those, even if you switched from being a Baptist to being a Methodist, whoa! It was a big deal in your family, in your neighborhood.

Now, how many different Buddhists or formats are theoretically available in this country. Moslem is the fastest growing faith in the USA   and there are temples here in Broward. You can do these things because they are physically available to you, and they are psychologically available to you now.

Your neighbors know people who have switched, if they haven�t themselves. It�s not a big deal the way it was years ago because large parts of the population doesn�t define our selves by our religion.

That�s just one example.

On the hit parade we had classical music, to 40 black music, what was called race labels.

Now there�s an extraordinary range of music. You can get it on CD. They�re rerecording stuff.   You can get music that was recorded on the turn of the century

We are working o n a satellite dish so you can hear talk radio from all over the world. Choices. Choices like you never imagined, much like the choices you have today were never imagined by your parents.

You�ll be able to download any kind of music you want

Choices, choices, choices

TRANSPORTATION
Anyone who knows anything about urban planning will tell you that you have to get the car out of the city. We must somehow move people in another way.   With public transportation. There are all sorts of beneficial effects from making it easier to walk from place to place and safer streets.

However, in the last 15 years, the car has gotten a lot more attractive and public transportation is basically the same bus that they were running 10 years ago.

In your car you have leather, the AC is stronger, there�s a CD and even video for your kids.

What does that mean? It means that the job has gotten tougher for bus advocates. How do you make the bus as attractive as the car..?   It�s getting tougher to get people on the bus.

Think about the stress that comes from this diversity and choice.

I can�t control my job, my kids, my and the overwhelming range of choices that I have to wade through. But I can control how I get around. I can decide who I will and won�t ride with.

This is all stuff we know. Does this stuff guide us in our decision making? Our public policy making?

What will we do about it?

HOUSING
Consider the size of the average dwelling, which has increased by at least 50 percent over the last 40 years. Levittown was fabulous for young couples who could buy a house for less than $7000, and it was between 750 and 840 square feet. The typical house today is well over 1000 square feet.

When my daughter and husband went out of law school, their first apartment was 850 square feet, and my wife was upset. I pointed out that we lived in an apartment in San Francisco that was about 500 square feet, enough rough for a table, a bed and a kitchenette.

If you look at the new apartments built near the Intracoastal at Sunrise Blvd ad compare them to the older units on Galt Ocean Mile. The new ones are bigger units but fewer in the same area.

How long can this go on?

The guy next door sold to Glenn Wright and he�s putting up a $3 million house.

People generally don�t want a big house next door �It�s going to destroy my property values�

Yet when they want to sell their house, then they hope that Glenn Wright will be there to pay them $1 million for the land.

How long can we keep this up?

We appear to have a traffic problem, but

Toys �R� Us has a seasonal employee shortage. They don�t hire folks in June to sell toys in December. However, we talk about our level of service for our traffic standard, which are based on peak times. What can we do?

People can work more at home.
We will need offices and downtown areas.

We don�t all have to be there at 8:30 am. Some of us can stay at home and handle email from our home computer.

Will Alden at BCC receives 300 to 400 emails a day. He doesn�t have to be in the office. In fact, he�s better off if he�s not in the office. So we�re going to start designing our living spaces to reflect the home. Andre Duany, the architect of new Urbanism designed an apartment that included a loft, not for artists who work in their living space, but he proposes lofts for all of us that could have offices in the home.

Others are converting the guest bedroom to a workspace. That�s a start, but we need to reconfigure our living arrangements to be able to spread out our time between work space and living space. Indeed, time is spreading out in other ways.

Look at how TV has changed over the past 40 years. If you leave the TV on past midnight, there is programming on the TV even at 3 a.m. They�re selling those Rotisserie things at all hours of the night. Most stations don�t put on the broadcast test signal. There are no sign-off and sign-on times for most cable channels. It�s 24/7, 365 days a year.

Our daily cycles of dawn to dusk are slowly being changed.

I like to think back to when our ancestors were in the caves. First they had to learn how to make fire, then learn how to protect it, then use it in cooking.
Genetically, we�re still the same as those folks in the back of the cave.
There haven�t been many changes in our genetic code in the past 20,000 years, but maybe in response to this new environment, there will have to be changes.

Let�s look at other areas of our society where we don�t yet see diversity. Right now, the US has a two party system. The system has been capable of forcing compromises for over 200 years. Our experience and the British experience show that the two-party system is far more effective and efficient than multi-party systems in running countries.   But in every other area of our lives we are living with or even demanding diversity: religious diversity, diversity in schools, diversity in entertainment, choices everywhere.

Yet forty years ago you used to be two or three things. You were your religion, your job and where your parents or grandparents were born. Those boxes defined you and in many ways limited your experience of the world. That pretty much was you.

Now we�re all kinds of things. We can�t choose where our parents were born, but in our diverse and less restrictive world, it doesn�t matter as much where your parents were born. We�re still a class society, but given talent and circumstances, we have greater opportunities for economic mobility.